So you think you're innocent?

Innocence.

Free of the guilt in the knowledge we've done nothing wrong. Committed no crime to deserve any punishment or rebuke. Neither forensically, found to be of guilt and therefore held responsible for it, or literally, caught in the act factually. Most of us never need feel guilty for committing a crime that would get us arrested and put in jail. We all make mistakes, we are human after all, and sometimes our misdeeds rise to the level of the criminal, enforceable by the laws of our society. But as long as we don't get caught lying, cheating, stealing or worse, we reconcile the event in our minds as something that couldn't have been avoided, had to be done because some need was there, or it was just a "once in a lifetime" thing.
If for some reason we are caught (by our own conscience in that we feel the weight of guilt or by others in that our crime is revealed) we do one of two things. Admit guilt and pay the social consequence. Do our time, pay our fine, suffer whatever social blow to our reputation that our modern 'tolerant' society has to offer. Or we make excuses to others and ourselves, chalk it all up to a learning experience, and find reason to blame others or reason ourselves out of accepting any personal blame for what happened.

Inundated with the profane, modern American media, television and literature has become the enabler and the proponant of all that is criminal. Everything that is socially, emotionally, physically and spiritually wrong can be found there, in large amounts. Turn on your new HGTV digital television and on every channel in the clearest picture you've ever seen, you find some story, sitcom or news program awash in sex, drugs, alcohol use, profane language, child abuse, abounding selfishness, materialism or otherwise. If its not blatently thrown in your face, its innuendo is there in every other scene. Revolving stories of betrayal, murder, adultery, sexual gratification and the self-obsessed, self-aggrandizing help to burn out of our minds the need for a sense of responsibility, mutual respect and the ability to understand what is right, and more importantly, what is wrong.

What's at stake here is the human conscience.

A tool, given to us by the one who created us, who makes the determination about our eternal destiny and is the author of the very right and wrong we live by. Our ability to understand the moral laws which govern our society, universal truths that cannot be reasoned away or denied, depend on our ability to utilitze this tool called a conscience given to us. The uninformed conscience of a young child doesn't know what is socially right or wrong. They're constantly in need of their parents care and discipline to correct their bad behavior. But once informed and shaped, the conscience allows us all to live in peace with one another and guides our relationships in the following of the moral laws that we have been given.

Burn holes in our conscience by refusing to listen to it when it reminds us what we are doing is wrong, and eventually we will no longer have a functioning conscience with which to lead us on the right path. Absorb the culture we live in, watch the movies and shows, hear the profanity, read the books, accept that the bad behavior as normal, seek constant entertainment, and you'll destroy your souls ability to see wrong for wrong. And why its wrong. Look in any prison today and you will see that every single soul there is there because at one time or another, their conscience could no longer tell them the difference between right and wrong. And because of that, they performed a crime that was severe enough to force them against their will in a place away from the rest of us. Innocence and an informed functioning conscience go hand in hand. A refusal to accept guilt and feel its weight or believe that your 'truth' is just as good as any other and therefore you shouldn't feel guilty for anything, is the road away from The Hard Truth, and to an eternally guilty verdict.

As discussed in the last post, we are all eternal. And our eternity is a result of our creation by an eternal God. But are you ready for the second element of The Hard Truth, another one that's as hard to believe?

The Hard Truth is that no one is innocent.

Not a single one of us. We have been found guilty in the highest court in existance before we were ever even born. Found guilty by the one who wrote the book on what it means to be guilty in the first place.

Found guilty because we ARE guilty, and deserve to go to jail.
But guilty of what?